


You Wake Up a Stranger to Yourself

by Suzelle



Category: Incredible Hulk (2008), Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bruce & Hulk Interaction, Bruce Feels, Child Abuse, Gap Filler, Gen, Hulk Smash, Hulk-sized baggage, POV: Bruce Banner, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 19:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzelle/pseuds/Suzelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce has been convinced his whole life that something was deeply wrong with him, because something was deeply wrong with his father and that kind of rage is too destructive to be right, that kind of grief is too painful to live with. But if he wants any hope of controlling it, he's going to have to experience it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Wake Up a Stranger to Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> This is my vision of what happened to Bruce between the end of _The Incredible Hulk_ and start of _The Avengers_. No archive warnings apply, but please do heed the tags.
> 
> A huge thank you to my betas, [salvage](http://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage) and [zopyrus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zopyrus) . Title from Dessa's song "The Crow."

Bruce can look back over his life and count on one hand the number of times he's tested his limits. It was just something you didn't _do_ living in his father's house, and even after he moved in with his aunt he never formed a habit of taking risks. Science was risky in the base sense, that if you mixed the wrong chemicals together they'd blow up in your face, but it never felt that way to Bruce, because he knew he was smart, because he knew what he could do, because for him mixing iridium and gamma rays was par for the course.  
  
Until the day that it _did_ blow up in his face, quite literally, until the day that his very existence became a risk and a test of his limits--just how long could he survive on the run, how far he could outpace the army, how many days could he go without killing anyone and feeling like death himself.  
  
The first five years became a marathon, then, one foot in front of the next, never stopping to take stock of the latest incident, always on the move, always on the encrypted laptop trying to find a cure, but never investing in it, not really. He settled in Brazil long enough to pick up a smattering of Portuguese and some good breathing techniques, but not much else. Still, it was just long enough to begin to dream of complacency.  
  
In that respect, Ross did him a favor of sorts, in finally drawing him back out. He got his answers, what he had been wondering for half a decade: there was no homecoming for him, there was no cure. He was stuck with this life, it was all on him to handle it, one way or another. He could hold onto Betty as a pipe dream, as a best-case scenario, but in the meantime there was nothing to do but try and wrangle the bits and pieces of his being, see if he could direct them toward something beyond blanket destruction.  
  
In the back of his mind he registers horror and grief at the prospect that the watchword was now “control” rather than “cure,” but he pushes it back the way he always has. It takes three full days of pacing around the cabin, trying to figure out how he was going to do it, before he realizes what he has to do.  
  
He’s been convinced his whole life that something was deeply wrong with him, because something was deeply wrong with his father and that kind of rage is too destructive to be right, that kind of grief is too painful to live with. So he’s spent his entire life trying to ignore the tidal waves of emotion that coursed through him. But now that his anger's been personified—and is clearly here to stay—there's nothing to do _but_ live with it. And, if he wants any hope of controlling it, he's going to have to experience it.  
  
It’s a strange thing, sitting alone in the cabin, emptying his mind, working not to repress or control his emotions but free them. The Other Guy's still there, scrabbling at his chest, trying to get out, but Bruce stays perfectly still, breathing slow, breathing deep, holding him back with every ounce of free will he’s got. It's not until he's allowed himself to feel the full force of his anger, as _himself_ , as Bruce, as the little kid who couldn't fight back, as the man who’s been hunted for blood, that he lets the Other Guy out. For a brief moment--but longer than usual-- they're in tandem, and he lets out a slow grin.  
  
He sleeps for a full thirty hours after he comes back, drained and exhausted, but his head doesn't pound and he retains a hazy cognition of what had happened while he was gone. He remembers those two minutes when they were nearly one, and he wonders if this life is livable after all.  
  
It hurts, and it threatens to overwhelm him--this balancing act of feeling what he's tried for decades not to feel, of not hating himself for it, having to fucking _negotiate_ with this part of himself that's not conditioned to reason. Memories he’d thought he’d lost swim back up to the surface—the time his dad took him to work and wound up shoving him into a glass cabinet full of beakers, running and hiding from his cousin the first day he moved in with his aunt, the time he watched the kid next to him in biology class kill the frog they were dissecting with uncalled-for relish and felt sick for days. He has to reorient his instincts, has to learn to channel his pain when it flares, rather than to push it back the way he has all his life. But he lives with his anger for two weeks before he tries to transform again.  
  
He still blacks out and wakes up with next to no memory of his time out, but this time he remembers more, knows he was in control for at least a span of minutes before he lost it all to the Other Guy. _Well_ , he thinks, _it’s progress._ He waits another two weeks and begins again. Hulk still calls the shots, but Bruce knows, he sees, he feels the glee that comes out of knocking some pine trees around for the hell of it.  
  
He still thinks about Betty but starts to face the facts, tries to process and mourn properly for once in his life and isn’t sure how well he succeeds. He knows that even if he gets this, even if he wins control over the Other Guy he’ll never have her—she deserves more than him and the thought of her father’s shadow looming over them hurts him more than the thought of being without her. She can’t wait for him and he won’t ask her to—and he’s still convinced that even if he fixes this there will never stop being a warrant out for his head. But he had that hope, back in Virginia and then in New York,  a dream and longing want for a life with her. And it’s hard to say goodbye to that.  
  
The grief that comes along with the anger never really goes away, and he wishes he knew of another way to keep a lid on this, a way that didn’t require him opening every wound fresh every day. He tries not to give into bitterness, but it’s hard to resign himself to the fact that this is going to be the rest of this life, that this mindless monstrosity is going to be his companion until the end of his days. He tries to keep things in perspective, but perspective’s harder to grasp onto when you’re trying to alternatively unleash and reel in the Jolly Green Giant.  
  
The isolation starts to get to him—he hasn’t been quite this far removed in years and though Bruce has always been an introvert he isn’t _that_ much of an introvert. He could take the truck that was loaned to him into the nearest town, but he decides to make the walk instead, hoping the chill of the night air will help to clear his head. He slips into the nearest bar and slowly makes his way to the front, orders an IPA from the bartender. A month ago he would have gotten more than just a beer, back when he was still optimistic enough to treat it like a game, to see how far he could push himself, what old habits of his life he could pick up again. But tonight he feels drained, tired rather than refreshed from the long walk into town and short on cash anyway (he’s going to have to find work again, and soon). He heads towards the back of the bar, threading his way through the crowd, aware of each space his body fills, taking care not to jostle anyone the wrong way.  
  
He finally settles into a chair in the corner and leans back against the wall, watching the patrons swirl and laugh around him. People seem friendly enough and he knows that it probably wouldn’t kill him to try and make conversation with some, but tonight he doesn’t feel anything but out-of-place. He feels exposed, the anger out on his sleeves in a way it’s never been before in public, and he wonders if his human body now exudes rage in the same way The Other Guy does. He can’t talk to anyone here, not when he’s so on edge, when he can’t seem to claw his way out of this self-pitying mineshaft, when he can’t stand to see a happy couple dancing in a corner without his gut twisting. He can feel the anger slipping past some line between grief and despair. The one he has learned to live with, the other threatens to engulf him. He doesn’t know how to face the fact that he will never dance like that couple’s dancing, will never have all he’s worked toward and fought for. Because, at the end of the day, he’ll slip, like he’s so close to slipping now, his demons will break free and he’ll destroy the people he loves. Again.  
  
 _Coming here was a mistake_ , he thinks, and even as the thought flits across his mind he can feel his control fleeing. The room suddenly feels hot and tight, and Bruce tries to make his way towards the exit. But all it takes is one bump, one moment where he forgets where his body is, one sharp shoulder to bump into him and a drink to go flying and he loses himself.  
  
He’s still on the outskirts of town when he wakes up again. He’s got no memory of what happened while he was the Other Guy, but the memories leading up to it come back to him in a rush and he retches, though nothing comes out. He falls back to the ground and sits there for a good half an hour before he forces himself to get up. He desperately wants to know if he’s hurt anyone but he knows he has to run, has to get back and clear out as quickly as he can before the Army comes and finds him.    
  
He stumbles more than runs back to the cabin, and it’s nearly nightfall again by the time he gets back. He’s going to have to run again, he’s going to have to leave, pack his bags and leave no trace and start again. He starts gathering his clothes together to put in his old duffel bag, but as he stares at the shirts bunched up on the bed he sinks down to his knees, grabs his hair and sobs, really sobs, for what might be the first time in his adult life.  
  
Not for the first time he glances at the hunting rifle that’s been sitting in the corner since he got here. He’s used it a couple of times to try his hand at hunting, never with much success. Now he goes over and grabs it, turns it over in shaking hands. He’s thought about this before, but this time, now—he just can’t see an end, can’t see an end past any of it.  
  
He gives himself credit where credit’s due. He knows he’s strong, knows he’s had to expand the limits of his strength ten times over in the past five years, has proved himself resourceful in ways he never dreamed. But he’s not strong enough for this. He’s not strong enough to live with his anger, this monster. He’s not strong enough to face that pain every day, if that’s what it takes to control it. And he’s not strong enough to look back at the people he’s hurt and continue to live with himself.  
  
He pulls the trigger, and the world explodes.  
  
He wakes up with his head feeling like it’s been run through with a thousand tiny nails. He’s naked, surrounded by splinters of wood; the cabin is destroyed. He looks at his hands, looks up at the destruction around him, and bursts out laughing—low, hysterical laughter that lasts for a good ten minutes. This is not how the world is supposed to work. You’re not supposed to wake up from an attempted suicide with the remembered realization that you’re _physically unable to die_ , but of course that would be his fate.  
  
After he calms himself down he contemplates, as he had briefly after Harlem, experimenting with this. The more morbid part of his brain wants to know what would happen if he attached weights to himself and dropped off in the middle of the Atlantic, but the idea of living forever as the Other Guy at the bottom of the sea is too gruesome, even for him.  
  
He doesn’t know where he wants to go, now—he’s got to leave Canada, probably leave the continent, but he hasn’t a damn clue what to do with this life. He wanders for days, hitches a couple of rides and eventually makes it down to Vancouver, finds his way to the airport. Almost on a whim he stows aboard a flight to Calcutta—it’s the plane closest to where he’s snuck in and it’s going the farthest. He sneaks into the luggage hold with more than a bit of satisfaction at his stealth. He knows there are easier ways to do this, probably less melodramatic ones, but he still feels like punishing himself after the nature of his last days in North America.    
  
In more ways than one the trip is good for him—it’s one of the more unpleasant experiences of his life, but he comes away from it with the realization that maybe he doesn’t deserve that much discomfort, and hey, he wouldn’t say no to a self-esteem boost, in whatever twisted form it might take.  
  
It takes him weeks to really settle, to do more than sleep in a different place every night, make sure he wasn’t traced or followed and could eke out an existence here for a little while. He doesn’t speak a word of the language, so it’s back to square one on that count. It’s entirely by accident that he starts the doctoring thing, but when he sees a teenage boy get hit by a truck in the middle of the street he’s the first one there, and keeps the kid from bleeding out. A crowd’s gathered by the time he’s finished and after that, well, word sort of gets around.  
  
He's never had any official medical training, but he’s smart enough to pick up the basics, and after years of trying to understand the biology behind what had happened to him he knows bodies pretty well. If he hadn’t had to patch up that mountaineer he found in the national park last year he wouldn’t have felt like he could ethically donate his services, but he had, and he’s done with living for himself. If he couldn’t take away his own pain, he could at least try to make other people hurt less. He tries his best to make it clear that he needs discretion above all else, and people seem to understand.  
  
He’s emptied himself out, and he knows this. There’s a solid two months where he’s a shell, walking through the streets but feeling nothing. The grief returns, as it always does, and he allows himself to feel it the way he had in the mountains. The anger still thrums through his veins, though these days it’s more on other people’s behalf than it is on his own. He supposes it’s healthier that way, and the crowds of the city turn out to be more practical exercises at control than a cabin in the mountains. A year goes by since Canada, and he wonders how long he can keep this up.  He doesn’t really know what will come if he can’t, but for now, getting by is enough.


End file.
